After deadly Haiti crash, Clark U. community aids family

Sunday

Sep 8, 2013 at 6:00 AMSep 8, 2013 at 8:28 PM

After the crash, Beverly Bell was the only one left standing, as she puts it. But she did not stand alone. About 9:45 on the morning of July 10, a group of eight, including Mrs. Bell, was driving to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where they would catch a plane back home to Massachusetts. Nearly halfway to their destination, the van collided with a truck, killing four, including Mrs. Bell's daughter.

By Alli Knothe TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

After the crash, Beverly Bell was the only one left standing, as she puts it.

But she did not stand alone.

About 9:45 on the morning of July 10, a group of eight, including Mrs. Bell, was driving from the small seaport town of Les Cayes to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where they would catch a plane back home to Massachusetts.

It was the end of a 10-day trip, after they visited and worked for the program that Amanda K. Mundt, of Amherst, founded to bridge the gap between two social classes of children in the small community.

"This was very much Amanda's dream," said Mrs. Bell, a Belchertown resident, teacher educator and the director of the master of arts in teaching at Mount Holyoke Extension in South Hadley accompanied by her husband, David Bell, a Clark professor and interim director of the university's International Development, Community and Environment Department. Also with them were their 28-year-old daughter, Meagan Bell; Ms. Mundt's father, Kenneth, and her aunt, Diane; as well as Haitian program director Timothe Indrik and and translator Samy Emmanuel.

Nearly halfway to their destination, the van collided with a truck, killing the 22-year-old Ms. Mundt, Diane Mundt and Meagan Bell.

Mr. Bell suffered severe injuries to his head and his spine was fractured. Mr. Mundt's jaw was broken. The translator's leg was disconnected. Mr. Indrik's shoulder was badly hurt. Mrs. Bell escaped with only a cut to her forehead and some bruising.

Mr. Bell said there was nothing that could be done for his daughter or Ms. Mundt, whom the family had known for more than a decade. At the time, Mrs. Bell was able to act at the gruesome scene to get medical help for everyone else.

"She was exposed to the worst of the trauma," Mr. Bell said in a recent interview, referring to his wife's emotional state.

The Haitian people helped pull survivors from the car, and saw that they were taken to a clinic, where they could be stabilized.

"The (local) people were just absolutely amazing," she said.

After roughly 10 minutes, the authorities arrived.

From their home in Belchertown, Mrs. Bell's son Bradley, who is a Clark graduate student, tapped into the school's network for help as her sister worked from Australia to organize a medical flight that would bring them back to the states.

One of Mr. Bell's past students from Clark was working in the U.S. Embassy building and was able to help organize an ambulance to transport Mr. Bell and Mr. Mundt the remaining 70 miles to Port-au-Prince.

"The network was unbelievable," Mrs. Bell said of the people who stepped forward to help. "I couldn't keep up with the phone calls," as other Clark affiliates who were in Haiti at the time called to lend their support.

Clark graduate Frislain Isidor and his wife, Martine, who is a current student, were able to scrounge up enough cash to cover the cost of an ambulance and for medical treatment, as electronic payment was not accepted, Mrs. Bell said.

But a storm was approaching the area, making it difficult for them to find open businesses with power and working ATMs.

When they arrived at a hospital in Port-au-Prince, the Isidors were waiting with food and supplies, and brought Mrs. Bell to their home to sleep.

Because they had been able to connect with the embassy so quickly, Mrs. Bell was able to fly back to the United States with her husband rather than having to return to the crash scene to identify the bodies and fill out paperwork.

On July 11, Mr. Bell's plane touched down in Boston, where he underwent emergency surgery to his spine at Massachusetts General Hospital the next day.

For five days the Clark community yet again came through, with a coworker who had family that owned an apartment where Mrs. Bell and her extended family could stay while Mr. Bell was in the hospital.

Others pitched in to give rides to and from Mass. General, pick relatives up from the airport and bring them meals, she said.

Bradley Bell's close friend and classmate Sameed Quasem said that the hashtag #ClarkieLove was running rampant on Facebook with words of encouragement and remorse for the Mundt and Bell families.

After their return to the country, officials from Clark were calling the family for updates three or four times a day to check on the status of those who survived.

Nearly two months after the accident, the Bells said they still come home to find the lawn mowed or trinkets and food left on the porch.

One of Mrs. Bell's old students from Mount Holyoke had also set up a program where friends could show their support by supplying the family with meals.

She said they were given three meals per day for a month and a half for all 14 people who were staying at the home.

Bradley Bell said that his sister was remembered by conacts from when he was studying for his undergraduate degree at Clark.

"Even professors that I had introduced her to (were reaching out)," he said.

Clark President David Angel, and other faculty, staff and administrators attended both services, for Ms. Bell and the joint memorial for Ms. Mundt and her aunt, Mr. Bell said.

He estimated that hundreds of his current and past students and colleagues contacted him and offered condolences and support.

Worcester resident Paul Rudenberg, who knew Ms. Mundt from her service in Haiti and is originally from Beverly, brought the ashes of those who died back to the US in time for the services.

In Haiti, members of the community that the group was involved with held memorial services for the victims, the Mundt family said.

The first week of August, Mr. and Mrs. Bell returned to work.

"Tell people we're fine," he said in an interview the following week, admitting that "This is hard. This is really hard, but we can't sit around moping."

Unable to drive because of a brace that held his neck steady, Mr. Bell was driven to work by his coworkers and others from the Amherst area.

Mrs. Bell also got support from her old colleagues from the dean and chaplain's offices at the College of the Holy Cross, where she worked as the director of teacher education from about 2007 to 2011.

"They have been a phone call away," she said. She recalled when Virginia Coakley, from the chaplain's office, called.

"She just happened to call on a really bad day and helped me to work through it," she said.

Friends and colleagues from throughout the area also made financial contributions to a handful of charities on behalf of the Bell family.

More than $10,000 dollars were donated to four charities in Meagan's name, Mrs. Bell said.

They said that because Meagan was involved in so many organizations, it was a real challenge to narrow the field to four organizations.

"She cared like Mother Theresa for other people," Mr. Bell said.

Field hockey was what originally brought the Mundt and Bell families together.

After the accident, teams throughout Central and Western Massachusetts and from as far as Maryland have reached out to the families and organized tournaments, made T-shirts and wore ribbons in memorial of the victims.

Soon after the Bells emigrated from South Africa in the late 1990s, Mrs. Bell coached Ms. Mundt's team at Amherst Middle School.

When the Bell family started a field hockey club, the Nomads, Ms. Mundt was one of the original players. She went on to compete for three years at Clark. Ms. Mundt was also a Making a Difference Scholar, studied international development and social change at the university and worked as an intern for the South Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. She was slated to graduate in 2014.

The group had traveled to Haiti to work with the summer school program that Ms. Mundt had founded in 2011.

The program, Lekol Dete, was designed to bring together the Restavek — children given or sold to other families to work in exchange for housing — and the free children, and hopefully bring an end to the system.

Mrs. Bell trained the program's educators about methods to work more effectively, and Mr. Bell gave feedback on the project and conducted his own research in the village.

Meagan Bell had been in touch with Ms. Mundt and the other organizers after volunteering administrative work for the program with Ms. Mundt's mother, Elizabeth, who was like a second mother, Mrs. Bell said.

The trip to Haiti was probably one of the happiest times of her life, Mrs. Bell said.

She used her American passport for the first time, started learning Haitian Creole and helped teach the students a new game.

"These two young people connected with everyone else on a very human level," Mrs. Bell said.

But after everything, the Bell family said there were incredibly thankful to the community for helping them get through this difficult time.

"It's about the community," Mrs. Bell said. "They are still carrying us."

Contact Alli Knothe at aknothe@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @KnotheA